For the seller

Should you sell your video game collection?

Sell a video game collection when you no longer play it and would rather somebody did. What makes it collectable is completeness, region and condition far more than age, and a large collection is better passed on whole than picked over, unless you have the time to sell it piece by piece.

Game collections tend to grow in layers: the console from childhood, the games bought back years later, the boxes kept in the loft, the handhelds in a drawer. Whether to sell is your decision. What follows is how to know what you have, and what each way of selling it asks of you.

What makes games and consoles collectable

Completeness. A game with its box, manual and inserts is a very different thing from the cartridge or disc alone. For many older games the box and manual are the rare part, because most were thrown away.

Region. European, American and Japanese versions are different objects with different collectors. The same game can be common in one region and scarce in another.

Condition of the boxes. Crushed corners, tears and water marks matter. So does whether a box has been flattened and reshaped.

The console itself. Boxed consoles with their original packaging, cables and controllers are far more sought after than a loose unit. Limited editions and special colours often more again.

Sealed copies are a world of their own. If anything is still in its original wrapping, leave it that way.

Before you sell anything

  • Do not open sealed games, even to check them.
  • Do not try to remove stickers or labels. It usually damages the box more than the sticker ever did.
  • Do not scrub cartridges or discs with anything stronger than a dry cloth. Worn labels cannot be put back.
  • Keep boxes, manuals and inserts with the right game. Mixed-up manuals are one of the most common reasons a complete game ends up counted as incomplete.
  • Photograph the shelves as they stand. A collection arranged by its owner says something a pile of boxes cannot.

How to get a sense of what you have

Go through it by console and by region, and set aside anything boxed, complete or sealed. A handful of titles will usually be the heart of the collection. The rest are the games everyone owned, which are slow to sell one by one but still belong to the collection.

Piece by piece, or all at once

Selling it yourself takes the most time: testing, photographs, listings, questions, packing, and the games that never sell at all.

A games shop or trade-in is fast, and usually only interested in what it can put on the shelf this week.

One buyer for all of it is what we do. We take the whole collection, including the loose cartridges, the tangled cables and the consoles that no longer switch on. Before anything is sold we record the story of the collection, and it goes with every piece to its next owner, with the collector's name on it. At Unseend, consoles and games are treated as the collector's pieces they are.

Wherever the collection is

We are based in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and buy collections anywhere in the world. Smaller collections can be sent, insured and arranged by us; for a collection worth the journey we come to it and pack it ourselves.

Short answers

Are old video games worth money?

Some are sought after, most are not. Completeness, region and condition decide it, not age.

Do the consoles need to work?

No. Untested and broken are normal in a collection. It only needs saying.

Do you buy single games?

No, only collections: roughly twenty objects and up, or fewer if they are exceptional.

Why we keep the story

A collection is not a pile of objects.

It is years of somebody deciding what was worth keeping, and sold off piece by piece that is the first thing to go. So before anything is sold, we sit down with you and record it: how it started, what the best of it was, the piece that got away. That story stays on every object with the collector's name, and goes with it to whoever keeps it next. You get a page where you can see where each piece ended up.

Three ways the story gets recorded

On camera, where it lives. We travel to the collection and film it properly: you talking about how it started, the room and the shelves as they are, the objects in your hands. Wherever in the world the collection happens to be.

On a call. If the collection is sent to us rather than collected, we have the same conversation over a video call and write it up, with one photograph of the shelf as it stood.

In writing. If you would rather not talk at all, answer a handful of questions in your own time and in your own words. It goes on the objects exactly as you wrote it.

It never changes anything else, and you can always say no to it. Some conversations run ten minutes, some an afternoon. Read the collections we have taken on

If it is a whole collection

We buy whole collections, not single pieces: one person takes all of it, and the story is kept with every object. Tell us what you have and a person replies within two days.

How passing it on works, in full

1The collection
What is in it
Pick everything that applies. Something else opens a line to tell us.
Roughly how many pieces
A guess is fine. Nobody has counted.
How would you describe it
There is no wrong answer here, and a lot of ordinary is a normal collection.
One or two sentences. This is the question we care about most.
2Where it is, and how it could reach us
Town and country is enough.
How could it reach us
Unseend is in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Sending and bringing are as welcome as a visit; if it is sent, we pay the freight and insure it.
When does it need to be gone
No hurry is a good answer. It lets us plan a visit properly.
3Condition and photographs
In your own words. Broken, incomplete or untested is fine and is normal; it only needs saying.
Photographs
Three to ten photographs The room and the shelves as they stand. Phone photographs are fine, and a slow walk round on video says more than any of them.Send them to hello@unseend.com
Or attach them to the reply that comes back within two days. Any of them works, and nothing is looked at until a person reads it. Do not clean up first — the shelves as they stand tell us more than a tidy arrangement.
4The number, and the story
A number or a range, whatever you have in mind. You will get an honest answer either way.
Would you tell the story of it
Filmed at the collection wherever it is, on a video call, or written in your own time. It never changes the price.
5How to reach you
The reply comes here, from a person, within two days.
Only if you would rather be called.

Answered within two days, by the person who would come, and by email at every step after that. Nothing you send is shared with anyone, and your photographs are deleted if we do not go ahead.

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